Unity to detail terabit memory architecture

SAN FRANCISCO—Next-generation memory hopeful Unity Semiconductor Corp. said Tuesday (Oct. 4) that Christophe Chevallier, a co-founder and chief operating officer, will present an invited paper on the company's CMOx solution for non-volatile solid state memory at the Nikkei Electronics CEATEC Silicon Storage Symposium in Tokyo on Friday.

Chevallier's pape will introduce Unity's memory cell designed into an ultra-dense vertical cross-point architecture that enables the coming "terabit generation" of 3-D resistance change memories, according to Unity.

Unity (Sunnyvale, Calif.) maintains that it is developing CMOx as a non-volatile memory to replace NAND flash. The technology is based on the use of new materials called conductive metal oxides. With the technology, Unity claims to have devised a passive rewritable crosspoint memory array that requires no transistors in a memory cell.

But Unity has struggled since unveiling the technology in 2009, following years in development. The company announced in 2009 that it obtained $22 million in funding. Earlier this year,Unity was reportedly rescued from severe financial hardship by a strategic investment from Micon Technology Inc. Micron declined to comment.

A transistor-free memory cell is the natural replacement of NAND flash, which is itself a transistor that is hard to manufacture. Also there should be a reduction of energy consumption per cycle. Lower read current takes too much time for error correction or prevention, resulting in excess energy consumption. CMOx still has low read current issue like NAND flash.